Year-end lists are rarely as definitive as they claim, but they’re pretty good at calling winners and losers for the year. And while our post-Talking Heads pals didn’t do as well as we hoped in hipster bible Pitchfork’s Top 50 of the Year, we can’t dispute their #1 pick.

This year, it went to the Bruegel-loving harmonizers Fleet Foxes, a well-timed throwback to David Crosby’s California. Of course, it’s not 1966 anymore and they're representing Seattle, not Southen California, which makes the mood a bit more pastoral and a lot less poppy. And unlike most other songwriters making their way through the blogosphere, the Foxes’ Robin Pecknold has serious music theory chops, so there are a few key changes mixed into the usual folkiness and the harmonies can get downright baroque.

Of course, all that nature means a lot of flannel and a lot of beard. So they should fit right in when they pass through Portland...

Market capitalism has had a rough few months, and everyone seems to be piling on. It lost the bankers to corporate bailouts and now it may lose its most vocal and culturally important spokesmen: the rappers.

The new single from the production team N.A.S.A. manages to lure Chuck D out of obscurity for an impressive verse, and that’s a MOTH you’re hearing on the chorus, but the song—titled “Money”—doesn’t seem to think too highly of the stuff. In fact, it’s downright skeptical. Maybe it's Shepard Fairey's video, but the paper chase comes out looking pretty unseemly. And if we can’t believe in material wealth, what’s left to rap about?

After a half-dozen pay-what-you-like internet releases, it hardly qualifies as news anymore. But when the album comes from two 70s vets, each with a long, legendary track record, it gets a little closer to newsworthiness.

More importantly, the album has been put up Radiohead-style as an offering to the internet and the nascent New Record Industry. Unlike the others, this one’s offered as an embedded stream and we’ve posted it below, meaning it won’t be taking up space on your hard drive, but you can click through any time you want to hear it.

John Waters wasn't the only one to surprise us with his stylistic splendor at the *Cry-Baby* musical premiere the other night. Waters' fellow Baltimorean Adam Duritz, the Counting Crows frontman and record producer, blew in like a breath of fresh air with a preview of coming attractions, sartorially speaking, swathed in summer suiting befitting a southern gentleman.

Quirky indie icon David Byrne has mastered many artforms, and he's got the Grammys, Oscars and Golden Globes on the mantle to prove it. The Scottish-born former Talking Head and RISD dropout recently joined Paul Simon onstage for one night of the latter's month-long residency at the Brooklyn Academy of Music.